


scrape the sky with tired eyes and I will come find you

by parpar



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Drunkenness, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 14:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5094668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parpar/pseuds/parpar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Newton, for the love of God.”</p>
<p>Hermann was not quite surprised to hear no real annoyance in his own voice, only a fond sort of resignation.  Surely it was simply the effects of post-drift camaraderie that made him smile so fondly at his lab partner, who was currently on his knees and vomiting into a mess hall trash can.</p>
<p>“Wassat?  You say somethin’?”  Newton swung his head up to blink red eyes at Hermann.</p>
<p>“Yes, I said--”</p>
<p>“Hold that thought,” Newton groaned, lurching forward to retch a few more times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	scrape the sky with tired eyes and I will come find you

“Newton, for the love of God.”

Hermann was not quite surprised to hear no real annoyance in his own voice, only a fond sort of resignation.  Surely it was simply the effects of post-drift camaraderie that made him smile so fondly at his lab partner, who was currently on his knees and vomiting into a mess hall trash can.

“Wassat?  You say somethin’?”  Newton swung his head up to blink red eyes at Hermann.

“Yes, I said--”

“Hold that thought,” Newton groaned, lurching forward to retch a few more times.

Hermann chuckled and swayed on his feet in time to the horrendous music blaring through the room.  He remembered the drink in his hand and tossed it back, then lobbed the paper cup into the trash can.  It bounced off Newton’s head and Hermann laughed harder.

“ _Dude_ , that’ssso not cool, I deserve some sympathy here.”  Newton’s voice reverberated strangely from inside the large metal drum.

Hermann collapsed onto a nearby cafeteria table bench, and reached out with his cane to pat Newton’s shoulder in a comforting manner.  “I am sorry, my dear boy, but that’s what you get for challenging our esteemed Mr. Choi.”

“That’s King Choi to you, Hermann,” came a shout from three tables away, drowning out Newton’s protests at being “jabbed in the neck with your cane, ow, Hermann!”  Tendo had dragged a folding chair on top of the table in the wake of his victory and was sprawled in it, surrounded by admirers and bottles of something the Level 3 Jaeger maintenance techs had brewed up in a bathtub last year in Seoul.  

Hermann snapped off a salute, grinning toothily at Tendo.

“Who knew Dr. Gottlieb was such a happy drunk?” Tendo called.

“Who knew you could drink so many shots?  Oh lord Jesus I think I’m gonna die,” Newton moaned, now lying prostrate on the tiled floor.  He hiccuped and rolled onto his back, flung his glasses at Hermann, and rolled onto his stomach again.  

Hermann folded and tucked the glasses into his shirt pocket.  Several people in the human resources department had started bowling near the dish busing station.  One team would propel a person on a rolling office chair into a row of empty two-liter soda bottles as pins.  Hermann watched the screaming and cheering in their group and around the whole room.  If everyone’s smiles were a bit manic or their laughs edged with the hysteria of grief, no one mentioned it.

Ah yes, now that he thought about it, Hermann found that he was pretty spectacularly drunk.  Though not as drunk as his poor Newton, who he couldn’t seem to stop referring to as “his” in his head for some reason.

Speaking of, or thinking of, did Hermann call him “dear boy” a minute ago?  He raised an eyebrow at the bottle on the table.  Perhaps the crudely made skull and crossbones label, painstakingly made from blue masking tape, should have been his first clue that he had been drinking poison.

“Hey.  Hey, Hermann?” came a voice from the floor.  Hermann swung around, spinning his cane in one hand and narrowly missing swiping a passing engineer in the eyes.

“Yes, Newton, what can I do for you on this most auspicious of nights?”

Newton coughed.  “Man, you are _drunk_.  Also.   _Also_.  I do not think...that I can stand up--oh shit not _again_ \--”  

He dry heaved and shoved himself up to kneel and grab the garbage can.  Hermann carefully watched the shift of muscles under Newton’s’ thin shirt.  His head tilted as he noted the outline of sharp shoulder blades and bumps of vertebrae, considering whether or not Newton’s tattoos would extend over his back.

After Mako and Raleigh had been retrieved from the ocean and the clock had flipped down to zero, Newton had changed into one of Tendo’s spare shirts.  Tendo had pushed the white undershirt into Newton’s hands, and Newton had smiled gratefully.  Hermann had stayed with him while everyone else had poured out of LOCCENT to mourn and celebrate and get smashed all at the same time.

He was beginning to regret that he had turned away to give Newton privacy while he had changed. It wouldn’t have been very gentlemanly to gawk like that at a colleague, but Hermann doubted he would ever have the courage to ask Newton if he had more tattoos.  The man already laughed at him enough.

Hermann stood, grunting with the effort, and shuffled toward Newton’s slumped form.  “Yes, well, let’s get you to bed.  It does not do for rock stars to lie in their own vomit.”

“Dude,” Newton said as he grasped Herman’s offered hand and staggered to his feet, “ _puh-lease_ , I’m a professional, mmkay?  I got it all in the trash can, and, and, and haven’t you ever watched _Behind the Music_?  Passing out in puke is at least half of what rock stars do.”

“Charming.”  Hermann pulled Newton’s arm over his shoulders.  It was a strange thrill to feel Newton’s shaking fingers curl around his neck.  He had to close his eyes against the sensation of Newton’s head falling onto his shoulder.  “Yes, well.  Come along, before we both embarrass ourselves further.”  

He adjusted his grip on his cane, aware that supporting even some of Newton’s weight could end in a nasty fall for both of them, but determined to help his friend all the same.  And he supposed that they were friends now, bonded through shared combat.  They moved slowly across the mess hall, smiling and refusing more drinks and carefully avoiding the silent groups hunched over their drinks, crushed by grief and shock.

Just before they exited the room, Hermann paused beside a young woman drinking alone.  She sat on the floor, leaning against the door jamb.  He recognized her as the helicopter pilot who had flown them back to the Shatterdome from the wreckage in the Bone Slums.  He cleared his throat and she looked up, fixing bleary eyes on his.

“Yeah?” she asked.

Hermann shifted Newton’s head into a more comfortable position on his neck, ignoring the quiet mutters about MTV programming and Mick Jagger.  “I just wanted to say that you flew extraordinarily well tonight.”

The woman cracked a smile.  “Thank you.”

He nodded briskly and they resumed their shuffling gait towards their quarters.  They walked in silence for the length of one hallway before Newton said something too quietly for Hermann to hear.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said that you were nice back there.  To that lady.  And you’re being nice to me right now.  I like nice you.”

Hermann swallowed.  “I am often nice, you know.  You just never seem to notice.”  He cleared his throat.  “Confirmation bias, of course.  It happens to the best of us.  You decided long ago what my character was so, naturally, any events that would prove your hypothesis wrong would be ignored.  I understand.”  

Newton sighed, and Hermann wrinkled his nose.

“I hope you have a toothbrush in your bathroom.”

“Nope,” Newton said happily, “I was using it and a pencil as chopsticks for some of those noodles that Mako made and dropped it in some weird dirt in the lab.”

“I have a spare that you are welcome to have.  In fact, I insist that you use it as soon as possible.

A crowd of Jaeger techs had dragged a cafeteria table out by the elevators and were playing beer pong.  There was something almost artistic in the slanting rays of early morning sunlight that spread across the table, highlighting puddles of the cheapest beer sold in Hong Kong.  Newton’s body strained to join but Hermann held him firm and steered him into the elevator.

Newton kicked out a leg and managed to push the correct floor button with his knee.  He wooed into Hermann’s nape.  “And I wasn’t even aiming!  God, I’m amazing.”

“You certainly are,” Hermann agreed, gritting his teeth through a painful muscle spasm.  He tried to surreptitiously stretch his left leg but Newton noticed.  

“Does it hurt much?” he asked.

“Ah, it is a bit sore.  Nothing to worry about.  Tomorrow I shall be right as rain.”

Newton sighed and tried to take back more of his own weight as the elevator doors opened on their floor.  “I know it hurts.  I know it hurts all the time, and you never complain.  You’re a really strong guy.  You’re a strong, nice guy.”

Hermann was too surprised to say anything.  He tried to haul Newton out of the elevator, but the man was plastered to its chrome wall.

“And,” Newton continued, “I do so notice when you’re nice, I’m just too messed up and weird to actually let myself be nice back.  Because I’m, like, because you know, um, you _know_ how you are, right?”

“Yes, unfortunately,” Hermann said.

“No, _no_ ,” Newton said.  He swung himself around to face Hermann, almost sending them crashing to the elevator floor.  “No, what I mean is that you’re intimidating, and funny, and _so handsome_ , and smarter than me, and, like, yeah!  You know?”

He beamed at Hermann, both eyes closed against the glare of the fluorescent lights.  Hermann stuck his cane out to stop the elevator doors from closing for the third time.  “I do not know.”

Newton cackled. “I’m saying, I’m saying how could anyone not love you, dude?”

Hermann blinked.  

He blinked again.  

He closed his eyes and shook his head.  When he opened them again, Newton was swaying and humming, smiling gently with his eyes still shut, as if he had not said the most ridiculous, unbelievable thing Hermann had ever heard come out of his mouth.

Hermann grabbed Newton and hauled him out of the elevator.  Hermann was saved from speaking immediately when Newton pivoted gracefully on his heel to vomit in a garbage can.  

A faint buzzing sound in his ears drowned out the horrible noises Newton made.  This was one shock too many, it seemed, for Hermann’s over-taxed mind and body.  Hermann promised himself that he would untangle what had just happened when he was sober.

“I’m putting a moratorium on thinking about what you just said until I am sober,” he decided to tell Newton.

“That’s fair,” the man said.  He wiped his mouth on the hem of his borrowed shirt, pulling it up far enough to expose his stomach.  His skin was pale and dotted with not as many tattoos as Hermann had imagined, when he had allowed himself to imagine Newton’s body.  Which was quite often.  Daily, even, if he was honest with himself.

Newton lurched into Hermann once more, ending Hermann’s licentious train of thought and starting a brand new one, this one focused on how Newton draped his overheated, sweat-damp body over Hermann’s back.  They set off for Hermann’s quarters that way, stumbling over each others’ feet.  

“Not entirely sure what I just said that you’re moratoriuming, but judging by your face it was something weird.  I do that, you know.  Over share when I’m drunk.  Actually, I over share all the time!  My therapist used to say it was something to do with my fear of intimacy or something like that, blah blah blah.”  

“And yet, I still do not know that much about you,” Hermann mused as they reached his room.  He had to juggle Newton’s various limbs wrapped around him in order to get the door opened.  “In we go, please refrain from vomiting on anything.”

Newton flopped onto his bed when Hermann nudged him towards it.  He spread his arms out and sighed.  “You took the time to make your bed during the end of the world.  That’s adorable.  I always thought your room would be crazy messy, to make up for how neat your office is.  Or, like, a hoarder nest.  No offense.”

“My mother always told me that making one’s bed was a habit that would make my future wife happy.”  He limped to his bathroom and sighed when he shut the door behind him.  

He rushed through his nightly routine and was back in the main room in minutes.  Newton hadn’t moved, aside from moving his arms on Hermann’s quilt as though he were making a snowman.

“Here,” Hermann said, handing Newton a toothbrush.  

“Thanks, dude.  Hey cool, it’s purple!  And oh man, you even put toothpaste on it for me.”  Newton blinked up at Hermann, eyes watering, lower lip trembling.  “Aww, Hermann…”

“All right, ah, let’s just...stand you up and get you to the bathroom.  I don’t want toothpaste on my sheets.”  Hermann didn’t know what to do with a melancholy Newton.  The man was always so relentlessly cheerful.  Suspiciously cheerful, now that Hermann had heard about his therapist and seen the man nearly cry at the sight of a toothbrush.

“You’re a good friend.  We’re friends now, right?  Yeah, we are.  I declare us friends.  We’ve always been friends,” Newton said around the toothbrush.  He had allowed Hermann to guide him to the bathroom and prop him against the sink.  Hermann gently closed the door and set about changing into some pajamas.

His left leg was in something resembling agony by this point.  He had jarred it terribly when he had fallen to his knees in the lab to save Newton from his own stupidity.  It had been such a busy apocalypse since that moment that he had not had time for pain medication or stretches or any rest at all.  Surely, somewhere in Germany his physical therapist was furious without knowing precisely why.

He chose his warmest pajamas and sat down on the bed to change.  As he pulled his sweater off he realized that Newton’s glasses were still in his pocket.  He cleaned them on a sheet corner and placed them on his nightstand next to his own.  There was a scratching at his bathroom door and he called out, “Yes?”

“Are you decent, good sir?”

“One moment.”  He wrestled his shoes, socks, and trousers off, biting his lip through the pain.  Finally he lay back and tugged the pajama trousers over his hips.  “Come in.”

Newton opened the door, spilling light into the dark room.  He leaned his head out, leering.  There was toothpaste on his ear.  “You’re not going to let me lean on you anymore?” he asked.

"Oh, of course, one moment."  Hermann pushed himself to a sit and groped for his cane.  

“No, no Jesus, Hermann I was kidding.  Stop it!”  Newton appeared at his side to help him stand and help him under the covers.  “Well, half kidding.  It was nice to see a chivalrous side of you, Hermy, but I think I can walk on my own now.  Maybe, we’ll see.  I’m gonna go to my room and pass out for a few days.”

“Thank you,” Hermann sighed, sinking into his warm flannel sheets.  Such bliss to be off his feet, to have saved the world and lived through it.  “You know, you left your keys somewhere in the Bone Slums and I doubt HR is going to be sober enough to unlock your door for you.”  He patted the other side of the bed.

“Oh.”  Newton sounded surprised.  And not a little pleased.  “You’re right, I think I threw my keys at a Kaiju tonight.”  

Hermann closed his eyes, free to drift in warm comfort, and heard Newton shuffling around his quarters.  There was the distinct sound of a belt buckle and a zipper and then the bed dipped under Newton’s weight.  

“And it looked like the HR peeps were heading toward an orgy in the kitchen,” Newton said as soon as his head hit the pillow.  

Hermann grinned and shifted toward his warmth, like a sunflower turning its face to the sun.  “Good.  They should be happy.”  He groped in the darkness to grab Newton’s hand.  He miscalculated and his hand landed on Newton’s chest.  “Are you happy?”

The man beside him hummed.  “Dunno.  I’m still really drunk so that’s nice.  Not to pin too many hopes on this brave new world we made, but I think it’s a place I could be happy in.”  He snuggled closer to Hermann.  “You?”

“Newt,” Hermann whispered.  “Can I tell you something?”

“Of course, dude.”

“I’m glad you’re here.  I’m glad you’ve been with me for so long.”

He was so tired, too tired to feel anxious at the silence in his room.

“Hermann,” Newton said, sounding strange.  “Ditto.  I just...ditto.”

“Your voice sounds odd,” Hermann said, drifting away into sleep.  “If you’re going to be sick again, there’s a trash can on your side of the bed.”  He patted Newton’s chest, solid and alive beneath his hand.  

“No, it’s--okay.  Don’t worry about it.  Just go to sleep, kay?”

“Okay,” Hermann said.  He tightened his grip on Newton’s t-shirt, prepared to sleep for the next twelve hours.  He could tell Newton that he loved him when he woke up.  There would be time for that.

**  
**  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hello, thank you very much for reading! 
> 
> Title is from "I Belong to You" by Brandi Carlile, which is a lovely song that makes me cry.


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